‘El Mar La Mar’

This meditative, experimental journey across the Sonoran Desert is one of two films in this year’s festival co-presented by Detroit’s Cinema Lamont, which focuses on world cinema. Eschewing facts and figures in favor of a more sensory approach, the film approximates the feel of Mexico’s hottest landscape as experienced by migrants making their way toward the U.S. border. Endless vistas juxtapose with snippets of untethered dialogue. Desert predators and the occasional human face provide some relief from sand and sky, but the star here is the landscape, its sprawling emptiness a reminder of the human suffering we cannot see.In English and Spanish with English subtitles.